Chicken-fat fuel factory to open soon

Two US entrepreneurs will spend US$5 million to build
a new biodiesel plant that will use chicken fat as a resource for producing
fuel.

Chicken fat is proving an attractive and economical alternative to soybean
oil - which accounts for around 90 percent of all biodiesel fuel stock, and is
increasing in price significantly. Currently, Soybean oil costs around 72 cents
a kilo, while chicken fat costs 42 cents.

Jerry Bagby and Harold Williams, through their company Global Fuels, plan
to refine chicken fat and mix it with soybean oil to produce more than 13
million litres of biodiesel annually.

A nearby Tyson Foods
poultry plant would be an ideal source of the low-quality fat, which is usually
shipped away to be rendered and used as a cheap ingredient in pet food, soap and
other products.

It's likely that cheap animal fats will be increasingly sought as a
resource for biodiesel, and many large corporations are beginning to realise
this.

Tyson Foods announced in November that it had established a
renewable-energy division that will be up and running this year. Perdue Farms and Smithfield Foods are
making similar moves.

Vernon Eidman, a biofuel expert at the University of Minnesota, estimates that within five years the
US will produce 4.5 billion litres of biodiesel and that half of it will be
made from animal fat. By that time, soybean-based biodiesel will account for
about 20 percent of the total, he said.